Art Metropole

#14938

The Missing Novella

Artist

Derek Sullivan

Date

2015

Publisher

Oakville Galleries

Format

Artists' Books

ISBN

978-1-894707-4

Size

15.2 × 22.9 cm

Genre

Canadian

Books and the act of reading have always been central to Derek Sullivan’s work. Where he has frequently drawn on the book’s mutable form, The Missing Novella sees the artist introduce literary elements such as traces of plot and allusions to characters. In his exhibition at Oakville Galleries, Sullivan staged Gairloch estate—formerly a private home—as a stylized country house inspired by well-known fictional settings, such as E.M. Forster’s Howards End and Belle Ombre, the home of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. Designed to mimic the dust jacket of Sullivan’s eponymous missing text, this fold-out publication features photographs of the exhibition and curator Jon Davies’ essay “The House of Fiction Has Many Rooms.”